ENV-0007 Lecture Notes - Lecture 25: Fertile Crescent, Genetic Engineering, Coevolution
8 Nov 2016
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Document Summary
Genetic engineering: more benefits to producers than consumers. Input (help farmers/ producers generate food) and output (added nutritional values) traits: varied ecological impacts. Genetic engineering tends to claim that it is lowering chemicals. Hunting and gathering: not modifying natural systems, generating edible energy flows from wild plants and animals, unmodified natural ecosystems, population density of hunter-gatherer societies is lower. Agriculture: domestication of seeds and breeds. Artificial and natural selection: low to high levels of ecosystem disturbance, population density of traditional farming societies is much higher. Increased disease: any system that requires inputs, loss of energy over time (grow plants, feed to cows, etc. ) Origins of agriculture: fertile crescent (modern middle east) lentils. Technical change hypothesis: agriculture possible with increasing tools and technologies. Co-evolutionary hypothesis: agriculture and humans coevolved through positive feedback. Small arch is the waste and return of organic matter. Resource depletion hypothesis: agriculture is a response to population growth and the best first principle.
